Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own WritingAuthor(s): Claire Kehrwald Cook
Pages: xx & 219 pp.
Published: 1985
ISBN: 9780395393918
"Line by Line...encourages and facilitates a precision in English syntax and usage that will add force to the work of any writer."

College Composition and Communication

Remarkably accessible and a pleasure to read, Line by Line reveals the techniques used by professional editors to detect and revise flawed prose. Writers learn to catch their errors and to apply practical revision strategies that can be adapted to any sort of exposition. Hundreds of poorly written sentences are corrected step-by-step.

Line by Line concentrates, as no other book does, on specific ways to improve first drafts. It shows writers how to recognize and eliminate the stylistic faults that most often impede reading and obscure meaning.

A popular feature of the book is an appendix that, in glossary form, discusses troublesome usages (e.g., disinterested vs. uninterested,may vs. might, the subjunctive mood, that vs. which,who vs. whom). Another appendix reviews elementary syntax.